[Mick]

[quote author=TreesAndBirds link=topic=17921.msg211029#msg211029 date=1510021283]
I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.
[/quote]

Based on my dealings with my alma mater, I would have thought all the extra employees were hired to turn me upside down, shake me until my teeth rattled and a few unaccounted-for coins fell out.

Maybe not a bad idea for UC-Antifa, come to think of it.

[Mick]

[quote author=TreesAndBirds link=topic=17921.msg211029#msg211029 date=1510021283]
I had a conversation with a dean of another Bay Area (much smaller)  university about 5  years ago who said that much of the growth in staff at his school was due to (1) govt regulations (eg, record keeping, reporting, investigations, complaint procedures, litigation prevention) and (2) student expectations regarding services they expected of a university (eg, non-academic counseling, off campus security assistance, various non-academic amenities) which he felt he needed to meet to compete with other schools. He was frustrated because the financial burden was significant, and he in fact resigned a few years later. Just one data point.

Yeah, both of those factors sounds right. There's become such an arms race for services to set colleges apart from one another that the educational mission has gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle. And I think it's a vicious cycle, because as students pay more for these services, they expect more, universities become more dependent on this source of funding, and don't want to do anything to piss students (and their parents) off. It's a bit like letting the patients run the asylum.

Notwithstanding my love of Stanford sports, I think the expansion of college athletics is unfortunately another byproduct of all this, where more athletic departments are deeply in the red and need help, but they're not actually core to the university mission. The Berkeley stadium funding fiasco is a perfect example - they're now robbing Peter to pay Paul, except that Peter exists for the sole purpose of education and research, whereas Paul is simply one of a number of sports venues in the bay area, and one of the worst performing ones to boot.

I'm not a subscriber, but the following article suggests that the "ideal ratio" of faculty to administrators is 3:1.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adminis...uch/135500
BC

The 3:1 ratio is interesting. It certainly suggests that UCB is waaaay oversaturated. The bizarre irony, too, is that I found UCB to have far and away the worst, most unfriendly, unhelpful, and downright mean administrators and support staff I've ever encountered.
[/quote]

Based on my dealings with my alma mater, I would have thought all the extra employees were hired to turn me upside down, shake me until my teeth rattled and a few unaccounted-for coins fell out.

Maybe not a bad idea for UC-Antifa, come to think of it.